How the heiresses dubbed the ‘dollar princesses’ brought US flair to the UK

The wealthy, glamorous, American ladies of the gilded age who married into the English aristocracy confronted some challenges – however they had been resilient, formidable characters. As TV’s The Buccaneers season two begins, and an exhibition in London is dedicated to them, we discover the lives of the ladies who impressed writers and artists.

Can the brand new Duchess of Tintagel avoid scandal? Will her fugitive sister, Jinny, hold her child from the clutches of her husband, the monstrous Lord Seadown? Can Mabel and Honoria’s forbidden love flourish?

The Buccaneers, Apple TV+’s hit interval drama, is again for a second season, and its legions of followers count on solutions to the entire above. The present charts the romantic adventures of a gaggle of younger American ladies – two pairs of sisters and their good friend – who, regarded down upon as nouveau riche by older, grander New York households, come to England within the 1870s and minimize a swathe by means of excessive society. Quick-moving, enjoyable and visually luxurious, it seems to be as if the costume price range alone might dwarf your complete expenditure of lesser exhibits. It’s lavish, vibrant escapism – but the unfinished Edith Wharton novel of 1938 upon which it’s primarily based was impressed by an actual phenomenon.

Between 1870 and 1914, 102 American ladies – 50 of them from New York – married British friends or the youthful sons of friends, and lots of extra married into the higher lessons. They had been dubbed “greenback princesses” and the favored view was that these had been purely transactional marriages – money for sophistication. The ladies gained a title and standing; the customarily cash-strapped aristocrats received a welcome injection of cash to assist them repair the leaking roof of the crumbling household seat.

“The decline in landed revenue throughout the Nice Agricultural Despair, starting within the 1870s, necessitated quite a few male aristocrats to hunt marital alliances exterior the interior social community of the British aristocracy,” explains Maureen Montgomery, a historian and Wharton scholar who’s at present modifying The Buccaneers for the Oxford College Press’s The Full Works of Edith Wharton. 

“One other issue was the openness of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, to rich businessmen being a part of his interior social circle and his penchant for the attractive and entertaining daughters of the American bourgeois elite who had been travelling in ever bigger numbers, after the Civil Battle, to Europe.”

The primary inklings of a novel to be referred to as The Buccaneers seem in Wharton’s pocket book for 1924-1928. There she set out the plot, revolving across the “conquest of England by American adventurers & adventuresses/households”.

“In the summertime of 1928, throughout certainly one of her many annual journeys to England in her later years, she visited Tintagel in Cornwall and stayed together with her shut good friend Girl Wemyss at her Cotswold property, Stanway,” Montgomery tells the BBC. “Each of those locations grew to become important settings for the novel.”

Nevertheless, Montgomery would not imagine that there’s anybody specific story or individual that the author drew upon.

“Wharton had shut buddies among the many British aristocracy, and went to weekend nation home events. She personally knew numerous titled People. She would have been acquainted with numerous eventualities for these marriages, how they had been obtained, the totally different motives for marrying,” she says. 

Some historians have instructed Consuelo Vanderbilt as one of many attainable fashions for The Buccaneers’ Conchita Closson. Thought-about an amazing magnificence, Consuelo was a “greenback princess” whose father made a fortune in railroads. Her dowry was price tens of tens of millions in at present’s cash. She was roughly bullied by her mom into marrying Charles Spencer-Churchill, ninth Duke of Marlborough, and was stated to have wept behind her veil on the altar on her wedding ceremony day in 1895 (certainly one of 9 US heiresses to marry English aristocrats that yr).

The wedding was deeply sad. “Sunny”, because the Duke was recognized, wasted little time in telling her he’d solely married her for her cash and so as to save Blenheim Palace, the ducal seat. In her memoir, The Glitter and the Gold, Conseulo wrote of a Blenheim Palace butler who had drowned himself: “As one gloomy day succeeded one other I started to really feel a deep sympathy for him.” Her marriage produced two kids however each Consuelo and her husband had lovers.

Consuelo had been preceded into the aristocracy by the godmother after whom she was named. The Cuban-American heiress Consuelo Yznaga Montagu, one other mannequin for Conchita, married George Montagu, Viscount Mandeville, in 1876 and have become the Duchess of Manchester when he inherited the title. The profligate duke burned by means of his spouse’s cash and had quite a few affairs. Consuelo, who’s talked about in Wharton’s pocket book, was reportedly very near the Prince of Wales.

Each Consuelos function in Heiress: Sargent’s American Portraits, an exhibition of 18 works by John Singer Sargent at Kenwood Home on London’s Hampstead Heath. The present has been curated by Wendy Monkhouse, English Heritage Senior Curator (South), and is the results of two years’ work.

“There was an actual gutsiness about these heiresses,” Monkhouse tells the BBC. “They had been courageous. They’d a tough time getting into British society as foreigners, and foreigners of whom everyone was envious and resentful and wished to take down a peg or two due to this ‘buccaneer’ trope.” 

They had been, supposedly, swashbuckling beauties who leapt aboard the great ship Britannia and, with piratical ruthlessness, bagged themselves a baron or an earl or perhaps even a duke. The English newspaper editor WT Stead used the expression “gilded prostitution” when writing about these transatlantic marriages.

There was opposition from the US too, on the highest degree. President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his ambassador to the UK Whitelaw Reid in 1906, “I thoroly [sic]… dislike these worldwide marriages… that are primarily based upon the sale of the lady for her cash and the acquisition of the person for his title.” And loads of atypical People hated the concept of all that wealth leaving the nation and being squandered on wastrel British aristocrats. This wasn’t what they’d fought a struggle of independence for.

However Monkhouse argues that the moniker “greenback princesses” does the ladies a disservice. “I believe it is a time period that has been tossed round for 100 years with out very a lot thought, aside from in educational circles,” she says. “The extra that you just delve into it, the extra it falls aside. I believe Consuelo Vanderbilt, although she would not name herself a greenback princess, kind of outlined the style in that she was a really wealthy American who was, not by her personal alternative, married for a title after which was sad.” 

Nevertheless, different ladies whose photographs are featured within the exhibition had very totally different tales. Daisy Leiter, glamorous and independent-minded daughter of a Chicago actual property magnate, was thought-about fairly the catch and never only for her cash, as Sargent’s magnificent portrait exhibits. She was bombarded with proposals however married Henry Howard, the nineteenth Earl of Suffolk. It appears to have been a really completely satisfied love match and produced three sons. In later life, Daisy additional exemplified the adventurous spirit of many of those ladies by changing into a helicopter pilot.

One other of Sargent’s topics was Cora, Countess of Strafford. Her title is echoed by that of a well-known fictional “greenback princess”, Cora, Countess of Grantham, in Downton Abbey. Julian Fellowes has stated that one of many inspirations for the sequence was a guide about American heiresses referred to as To Marry an English Lord. The true Cora was a Southern belle who married the 4th Earl of Strafford after the loss of life of her first husband, toothpaste baron Samuel Colgate. The Earl died simply 5 months after the marriage when he fell on to railway tracks at Potter’s Bar. The incident prompted a lot gossip, as did the truth that Cora wore her coronet sideways at Edward VII’s coronation. 

Among the best recognized of the ladies within the Heiress exhibition, represented in each an oil portrait and a charcoal drawing, is Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, the daughter of a Virginian railway tycoon and the primary girl to take her seat as an MP within the Home of Commons. She had common clashes with Winston Churchill, whose personal mom, Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of a rich New York speculator and financier.

There is a splash of politics within the new season of The Buccaneers that sees Nan realising that her elevated social standing provides her energy and affect, and starting to wield it. Buccaneers showrunner Katherine Jakeways learn extensively on the “greenback princesses” earlier than writing started on the sequence, and he or she attracts on their tales, in addition to the Wharton textual content.

“You think about that the ladies who came visiting had been attention-grabbing to the boys as a result of (a) they had been stunning, (b) they had been American and (c) they had been wealthy, however truly what’s actually attention-grabbing is that (d) they had been significantly better educated and way more inspired to be confidently concerned in society [than their English counterparts],” she tells the BBC. “In New York their opinions had been sought whereas ladies in England, as we present with Honoria in Season one, had been requested to not communicate or have an opinion.”

Like their real-life counterparts, the ladies within the present do not conform to reductive stereotypes. “Our characters are sophisticated and have depth, and we attempt to make all of the relationships have some sort of resonance for a up to date viewers,” says Jakeways. “And hopefully it is simply actually good enjoyable.”

Season two is one other rollercoaster journey that remixes all of the profitable components from the primary sequence. Will there be a season three? I would guess an heiress’s dowry on it.

The Buccaneers Season Two premieres on Apple TV+ on 18 June.